Why Our Politics Are Stuck In 2016 | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast 

0:25: 🎙 The 538 Politics podcast discusses the current state of electoral politics and the lack of serious challengers to Trump and Biden in the primaries, with Americans feeling dissatisfied overall. 6:32: 🔑 The video discusses the shift in political debates from New Deal issues to identity-inflected issues after 2016. 26:41: 🗣 The candidates in an election are important, but they come with constraints relative to their opponents. 14:03: 📰 The focus on identity politics is unlikely to end with Trump's departure from politics. 19:38: 💼 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's different approaches to the global financial crisis and Trump's impact on the narrative. 32:53: 🔀 Trump has moderated his stance on abortion, which could potentially change support for him in the primary or general election. 38:44: 📚 The video discusses the possibility of Joe Biden adopting a similar position as Republicans on border security to appeal to marginal voters. 45:23: 🗣 The 2024 presidential contest is expected to be different from 2020, making it harder for candidates to persuade voters to change their opinions. 51:58: 🗣 Internal party struggles and competitions exist within both the Democratic and Republican parties, shaping their ideologies and power dynamics. 57:44: 💬 Politics is about fighting over the path to the outcome, whether it's within the same party or different parties. 1:03:57: ❗ The current political landscape in the US is influenced by partisan balance, incumbency, and murky economic context. Recap by Tammy AI

That was such a false equivalency about who’s fault calcification is. Sure, there are two sides to EVERY conflict, doesn’t mean they are both equally responsible. It only takes one side to start a fight. This is the same kind of reasoning that punishes students for defending themselves when a bully physically attacks them.

They're not equally experienced. Biden has decades of political experience. Trump has four years experience. Just enough to have learned how to do more damage.

35:00 I do disagree with the assertion that Trump wouldn't bring up Biden's age and mental state. He already brings it up regularly, with the general claim that Biden is senile for his age, while Trump sees himself as sharp-witted for his age.

40% won't move on and the other 60% in both parties can back another candidate. ∴ Therefore we are stuck until more of the 40% dies. This has happened before.

Do a lot of folk on the left care about culture war issues? It does seem that a lot of Dems I meet share the "meh" attitude towards those issues, while being focused on more material matters!

Things have already changed in ways I intensely dislike and it's feeling like it might get a lot worse. At least Biden is a better President than I expected. Unfortunately Dems haven't put things back in place. At least for now we have an experienced President with wisdom and empathy.

Its not about sides its about good and evil, and if you can't tell the difference between them, you are part of the problem.

The candidates don’t matter in a two party system with clear differences between the parties.

The only point I would prob be that the calcification is coming from the right given the catalyst was Trump himself. The positions on the left have not changed so much. If anything the progressives and the business left have become more pragmatic.

You made the point that the 2020 election had 150M people vote but was decided by less than 50K voters in three states. However, you made the mistake of assuming that those decisive voters were moderates -- they were not. The election in 2020 and the election in 2016 were both determined by turnout of base voters in these close states. The favors a candidate that can increase turnout and thus favors Trump over Biden.

I watch both fat right and far left media and the far left media talks FAR MORE about identity politics. Not even close.

Even beyond the abortion issues as vital as those are, the open planning for a viscous autocracy and the end of democratic government is the big divide, yet I heard not one word on that from this program. Democrats have been talking about policies to make folks lives better and following through with actual progress, while Republicans have been gaslighting their base twisting truly awful goals to somehow be a good thing.

Clue: Cash is speech and corporations are people. Discussing ANYTHING else is rubbish.

Remember folks, these are the same people who constantly complained about identity politics in 2016.

Good show. Fascinatingly insights. A minor disagreement w Prof V. during discussion on age factor of President she said neither President nor 45 had an advantage. Yet, 45 continues to hammer President's age. Mainstream media reports. 45's approach is to create a "separate reality" that feeds base and gets his message out; "Biden is old and I'm not"

I am sure I heard Galen say that intra-party conflicts are more "intrasting" 😂 right around 1 hr.

Women, LGBTQ, black Americans, the working poor…identity? or just the entire US population

In 2024. The choice is democracy in Biden or fascism in Trump

Trump For Prison 2024!

I've added the phrase "pissed off" (or some variation of it) in my classes when explaining some material as a deliberate attempt to humanize me and/or what I'm lecturing on. I don't have any Idea it's working, but I'm not about to take it any further. 😅

You say that most of the differences and changes have come from 2016 and Donald trump, however the Obama change that came was also Donald trump and his birther-ism.

Instead of using focus groups to find the most palatable candidate, how about pushing for better economic policies that don't result in massive inflation? Real wages have stagnated.

Having equalized numbers of voters in each party is a good thing if and only if both parties cooperate in all ways. The serious issue now is the polarization is dominated by the extremes of each (mostly the extreme in the Republican Party). The good about the Democratic Party is the Party still has a majority of it in the center while the majority in the Republican Party are in the far right or at least are bowing to the far right in all ways. Seems like there are 2 solutions for voters in a positive way forward: 1) vote for a 3rd centrist Party that will address the majority of the Country's issues, or 2) the Republican Party voters need to vote out all that maintain the far right extremes that dominate the Party.

brilliant analysis

Just ignoring the horrific use of polling this past week from ABC/Post?

Yeah, Trump won't harp on Biden's specific age, he'll just call him "Sleepy Joe" a million times.

I would like to echo Prof. Vavreck's final sentiment, about praising 538 in getting people engaged in the political process over the past _fifteen_ years. Simultaneously, making clear that there are important and firm rules to these political competitions, while also constantly reemphasizing that it's a roll of the dice to predict what that many folks' decisions will be on one Tuesday in November. (Including, of course, whether to vote at all!) Learning about their methods and processes has been a great instruction to me over that same time, thank you 😊

Really appreciate the insightful and intelligent conversation here. Well done.

Trump is basically a Smells Like Teen Spirit moment for US politics. Will rock music (or politics) ever be the same again? No.

Fivey, no!!!!

Biden and Trump are the same damn age, THANK you for pointing that out Lynn. Gotta love how Galen had to interject to protect the rehabilitation of Trump by ABC and others with "but no, Biden old". Trump is just as old, and if he were to win he would (for the SECOND time) claim the title for 'the oldest president we've ever had'. Maybe his age isn't focused on so much because it doesn't even crack the top 10 reasons why he's a terrible candidate: they'll never be able to walk back J6 - easily one of the most despicable and heinous acts from any president ever. He's facing 91 felony charges - of which he'll almost certainly be convicted of a large number of those (Hunter Biden is not a neutralizing force as there is no evidence of Joe Biden's involvement, and he's also NOT IN THE ADMINISTRATION). They'll never be able to walk back overturning Roe - which only happened because of Trump (who now wants to act like he can backtrack and 'negotiate with the Dems'). The list goes on, and on, and on.

Now we know that Trump was right on nearly everything.

Great show. Ha my language students love a bit of spicy talk in my class.

Great interview!

“It’s the economy, stupid!” -Bill Clinton campaign

I'm literally less than 1 minute into the video and you are being "too much of a c***" to even finish the video. Thanks "autoplay"... SMH... FML...

Lacks insight. Voters are not down on the Biden - Trump rematch. They're down because MAGA Republicans and Trump are not gone already.

So what does all this say about that 1 of 10 voters who believe there isn't a difference between the two major parties?

Very short sighted take that do not consider the wider global undercurrents of distrust in democratic institutions. Trump is a symptom not a cause, terribly reductionist perspective that seems more concerned with promoting itself than presenting dialogue. Where is the off ramp, where is the invitation to substantive discourse?

Our politics are stuck in the 1990s.

Weird editing in this video.

Absolutely wild that the candidate who’s literally just running to save his own hide from his previous crimes while in office, and remake the government in his image, is given equal validation in rational conversations about “both sides”

I mean the culture war was coming either way with social media and all. Plus Trump 2016 had economics in the cards wanting to talk about renegotiating trade deals , cutting regulations, etc. Seems like yall are missing the real culprit which is social media. 🤔

This is the best episode of 538 podcast out of all the one I watched.

"No serious primary challengers"? No thats a wrap. Buh-bye

Something lost on the discussion of why young men are trending right is the influx of right-wing podcasters/influencers like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and even Andrew Tate who are all trying to appeal to young men, telling them that their masculinity and their status of power within their family and society at large is at stake.

It's always beta-males...

Identity politics…like racism in 1964, sexism in 1972, religion in 1980 where Reagan started the religious zealot/cultism of fundamentalism. Never trumpets are crossing over and bridging between the parties

I would like to go back to New Deal era politics. I don't like what's going on now at all. It scares me. Politics should be about policy, not identity. If this continues too long is it going to come down to the identity of each individual American having to be addressed?

Dems and Reps (the voters, not the politicians) want the same thing: End the corruption

Nope, Americans's are not down on a rematch, most want Trump to win, so basically you're an opinion page, not facts. Good to know!

Congratulations!! I abhor politics, but your discussion today kept me calm & interested through the entire time! Very intelligent, mature, balanced, non emotional sharing of facts & ideas. Amazingly y9u both came through to me to be unbiased for/against either party or individual candidate. Ty. So glad I happened upon your show today!

Biden has much more experience. Trump was never a politician until he was elected President. Biden on the other hand, rose through the ranks over 50 years as a politician ans spent 8 years as VP. there is no comparison, and I think it's insulting to Biden to put him on par wirh Trump as far as experience goes.

If data is better than vibes why is it worse

Enjoyed the interview very much! One quibble I have, though -- she said Trump gained a lot of GOP support due to their agreement with his policy positions. I think Trump espoused a lot of non-doctrinaire positions. A lot of folks seemed to like his pugnaciousness over other reasons. Also, I'd love to see a study of how many voters in 2016 weren't voting FOR a candidate, but voting AGAINST the other. A lot of folks despised Hillary & would never support her. Others understood Trump's lack of character and bad decision-making record and refused to vote for him. I wonder how much the negative votes determined the outcome...

What a lovely erudite interview.

In a nation of 330 million (and counting, thanks for the open border Joe!) people, you'd think that we could come up with two better likely nominees than Trump and Biden.

Fantastic episode! She’s a great guest!

This channel loses credibility when only panders to liberals

Good interview, Galen. We are very calcified in our party orientation but to decalcify we need to have a different focus. That is usually a war, an epidemic, or a financial crisis. I just don't see that happening. The only other thing that matters is to reorient focus on candidate disparity. And for that to happen we need two different presidential candidates. Like Scott or Haley v Newsome or Whitmer. Both sides with younger and more appealing Gen X and Millenial candidates,

Fivethirtyeight will every single episode talk about “how do black women feel about this?” “As a Latino in the Deep South, what are their chances?” Etc. etc. Every issue is identity politics. And this lady tries to blame Trump for identity politics, it’s quite laughable. She calls the wall ‘Identity politics’ and classifies Trumps travel ban as a Muslim ban.

I am sorry to disagree with the authors of the book. They introduce several interesting ideas, including the idea that the Right and Left have polarized in areas that and remained “calcified” in those areas in two successive elections (2016 and 2020). I am not sure that I agree that the polarization is centered on identity issues. I think that authors failed to take into account several demographic development. For example, many more people are college educated in 2024 than in 2016. This is the first population of the US that grew up with internet. At the present, unemployment is at its lowest in 20 years. What they are not taking into account the criminality of Trump, the propagandizing of the truth that has occurred on both sides, or the fact that race is not as important today as it was 10 years ago (in 2016). It is almost beyond my understanding how so much of the US population is anti-science, anti-climate change, and anti-vaccine. The number of anti-vaccine people is astonishing. The vaccine story is probably the most highly supported scientific story ever presented to the American people and yet a third of the population think that vaccines are causing all these problems when the actual numbers are probably on the order of 2-5% vaccine complications. In my opinion, Trump’s support in the American population is overhyped. I think that there are fewer Trump supporters than a third of the population. It roughly corresponds the education divide in the US population. Biden has performed much better than Trump. Biden is not that much older than Trump. Trump is old and behaved much worse than Biden.

Sanders is older than Biden and Trump and Sanders doesn't need a teleprompter like Trump Biden and Sanders is more healthier than Biden and Trump

Independents are swinging towards TRUMP!

Trump supporters are stuck in the 1800s

It's only a replay because Trump is trying to pardon himself and publish his enemies. Are you literally not allowed to say that?

Trump is Unstoppable

On the subject of the border, Biden is very much considering the optics of the situation, above even American honor. While the withdrawal was started by Trump, Biden was more than happy to let Republicans dictate immigration policy for Afghani interpreters who served with US troops by remaining silent, because he knows that bringing in brown people could cost him the election; one could just see the fact that the US has taken in far more Ukrainian refugees for a simple comparison.

Tell Marianne she's not a serious candidate on the debate stage lol

Tell the candidates with 10 to 19% support in the primary (compared to Biden who only has 34%) AND THEIR SUPPORTERS that they're not serious candidates. And all that support, despite the BLACKOUT campaign (like from 538) and SMEAR campaigns against them. I thought 538 was pro-democracy. Guess not.